The Supplement Scam: How to Find Brands That Actually Work

Introduction and Guest Background 0:00

We need a team approach, especially past age 40, because we can't read enough, listen enough, and be an expert at everything. We need someone who spends all day long, five days a week, like yourself, studying and has a passion and the ethics and the mindset that our bodies are built to be healthy, but something's got in the way of it. How do we fix that? This is Dr. Talks. Hello everyone and welcome back to the TBD Fit podcast. Today we are joined with Ed Jones, who's been on the front lines of natural and holistic health for over four decades.

So he brings a breath of experience to what we're going to be discussing today. He's the founder and owner of Nutrition World, the thriving wellness and nutrition center based out in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he opened up his doors back in 1979. And so it's home today to over 15 different health practitioners, almost 40 different staff and a national reputation for excellence. So we're eager to hear Ed's perspective on all things when it comes to supplement and transparency and wellness, nutrition, and even exploring some personal biohacking strategies that that he finds successful.

In this episode, we'll dive into how consumers can sometimes avoid the noise with identifying effective supplementation and biohacks that are worth your time. Ed, it's a pleasure to have you on. You've been in this world for over 45 years now. How would you suggest for the lay population to tell the difference between high quality supplements and poor quality supplements, if you will? I think that's a very excellent question. I think there's a huge amount of confusion around that. You know, about 80% of the people in this country take supplements of some form or fashion.

They obviously have faith in the fact that we believe in them, that they can help escalate our life, maybe help us live longer, we don't know, but it is a positive for the majority. And I wish I could say there was an absolute, but here's my rules for, you know, really helping guide people to a better choosing of products. One is if you don't know at all anything, I really value independently owned health food stores that have a history behind them. The corporate stores. in this industry are actually pretty darn good, but the individual stores like myself who've been doing this for years or decades has very high ethics in most cases.

What does that mean? That means we look into the deeper parts and transparencies of companies. We get certificates of analysis. We make sure that everything is done properly. They have the right labeling. And secondly, I really feel that Amazon's not the place to go for most of these. There's way too many counterfeit products that actually look like this, but someone has just created a bottle or a label, which is so easy today, and these are pills that are not really what's on the bottle. And then secondly, the amount of heat that those products sit with UPS trucks from Amazon are destructive in some cases in the summertime.

Now thirdly, is looking for labels that will confirm the fact that things have been checked out.

How to Spot Quality Supplements 3:30

Organic, regenerative farming, non-GMO, sometimes QR codes on bottles will actually go to a lab test. So there are verifications now that are far better than five years ago or actually before COVID. So we have options now that we did not used to have, but finding companies with long-term success and ethics is really key and sticking with those brands. Yeah, you know what was very interesting to me? I didn't realize this. So when you mentioned about counterfeit labels, I had no idea that anyone can kind of manipulate the system.

So when you look at certain supplements and certain brands on Amazon, I didn't realize that a lot of these third party players are actually selling counterfeit or fake supplements, but under the label of the reputable company. That was really recently news to me. And so you just have to ensure that it's actually the organization who's selling it, rather than some sort of third party who has no authorization. And I read a study years ago that. I think is when they were testing supplements in Walgreens and Walmart, particularly, that over 90% did not indicate what it had on the label, meaning that the supplements that were said to be inside, 90% of which were not contained in the actual formulation, some of which had ingredients that were not on the label and some very poisonous ingredients.

I don't think people understand that supplements, while they're used to supplement your lifestyle, they can be harmful. Just like nutrition in general, food to me is instruction. Supplements, same so. They can be used to heal us or to hurt us. So I appreciate kind of your two cents there. When people are finding you, is it usually just someone off the street walking in looking for some supplements or healthier eating options in terms of nutrition? or advice, like how do people find you? Or maybe like a foray into if you can provide how you started everything.

I think word of mouth is because we're in a town of about 300,000. You know, in a town of three million, it may be different. But in our town, it's still kind of a small country town, even though it's a medium sized town. And word of mouth is so powerful. Secondly, social media, of course, is the magic that happens. And people are also frustrated and losing hope. And when you're frustrated and losing hope and you start understanding the power of food and nutrition and lifestyle, Then you start looking outward of who else, who might have more experience than I do.

And, you know, since we position ourselves as the expert in the community with my wonderful staff of almost 40 people, one's a pharmacist, one's a nurse practitioner, one, we have all kinds of really professionals and also life experience people, then they find us. And it's been a vast change from our early days when we would see one customer an hour and now we do 400 each day. So it's been a real blessing. That's incredible. The volume and obviously approaching everything with some integrity is key there, but prior to our recording, you had mentioned that you had just finished a bodybuilding competition.

So at the age of 68, certainly you practice what you preach, which I have respect above all else because that's no small feat. How did you get into this realm? Was fitness and nutrition always core to your existence or what was the catalyst? I started working out at 14 years old and it just clicked on me. I was a real skinny 119 pounder and it gave me self-confidence. It made me feel better physically and there was just something in me that knew it was the right path as far as my overall life, including my health.

I actually was a young person who understood that Health is not permanent, that health can be taken away or it can be increased by the things we choose. My dad brought a Shackley salesman into our house when I was about 11 years old and it was a shift for me because she talked about the power of food and nutrients and how we can stay well and not be sick. And, you know, I'm looking at my dad thinking, I want my dad to live forever. You know, all 11 year old boys whose their dads are hero, you know, they shouldn't ever die.

And so all of a sudden it was like, dad, if we eat better and take these supplements, we both can live longer. And that was where I really turned the corner for the power of food. Yeah, the power of food certainly and as well as the power of supplementation. How critical or how essential do you find those two to be or one versus the other? Like in terms of supplements, do you feel this is an essential given our modern evolution with just clean air, clean water and clean food or perhaps the opposite?

How essential do you find supplements to be? I think our knife and fork is number one. I think that equally exercise and supplementation is two as we age.

Nutrition, Toxic Burden, and Why Supplements Matter 9:00

You know, the thing about supplementation is I don't think we're all super deficient in nutrients, but what we have to do is upregulate the ability to handle the level of toxins that we are now impossible to run from. Everything from the electromagnetic fields to the molds to the pollution and, and, and, if we don't have the highest operating system within us, within the liver to the P450 system, all the glyphosates, we generally, our cup gets filled of toxins. And when it starts overflowing is where all the disease and symptoms come in.

And that's why some people can do certain things and they're fine, fine, fine until they're not fine. Well, it's just that everything accumulated and it became a critical point. And so when we do nutrients, we do a lot of positives as far as helping to. modify some of this effects of poisons and toxins within our life. And I think that has become almost paramount to me. It is not about solving deficiency. It's about helping me to help this body being able to handle this world as we are progressing.

So do you find at Nutrition World, a lot of the people that are coming in to see you guys, is that what they're struggling with? They just super toxic. They're feeling more sick because as you said earlier on, if people are just getting more and more sick, it's important to have hope, but it's important also to understand kind of what's what's driving this. And in the Midwest, we are kind of ground zero for all things, herbicides, fungicides, pesticides. So I almost see this as like, because I'm out in Chicago right now, I mean, we're like a fish out of water in terms of we're really preaching optimal health and human performance, but yet the Midwest is notoriously kind of not that, let's say.

So I'm curious kind of your take on the people that come find you, that come see you and how you're able to intervene. Well, they don't normally come to find us if they're feeling like a million dollars sleeping well and have proper weight. So there's a reason that is motivating them. And, you know, we are in a place of social media, the radios, the radio stations we do, all of the TV, this, that. And I think we just find, they find us in a moment when they didn't expect to find us. And it just kind of rings a bell in their head.

Now they have already had to have started this inner conversation. No one is going to wake up one day, even if they're feeling a little lousy and say, I think I need to explore the power of nutrients and food unless something has shifted within them from either a friend or relative reading, listening, podcasting. It just doesn't come natural to most people. I always say on one of my podcasts, Vital Health Radio, which is a radio show actually of seven years that goes to a podcast. You know, most men think their bodies are like a Ford F-150 truck.

And every morning you get in that truck, you start and you go to work or you go wherever you want. And it just runs until it doesn't run. And then you go into a mechanic and you get it fixed. Well, that mentality is, you know, you run to the doctor to get it fixed. A lot of times you wasted 25 years trying to wait for that moment. I think COVID was amazing how it opened some people's eyes to the fact that bad things can happen to us if we're not healthy, because we do know even people who weren't into believing in this power of nutrition, they knew that the unhealthier people were dying at a far faster rate than the healthier people, obese people, smokers, this, that, whatever.

And I think that rang a bell in a lot of people. It opened their eyes. Yeah, there was a huge reflection point, which in one respect allows us to now have these conversations, the accelerated kind of tech and telehealth and the ability to reach and help more people on a much broader scale. But when you said, I think it was like fork and knife, you know, that to me remains foundational and helping people understand what healthy nutrition is. Because often enough, we've kind of lost that. I think it was back in the 1900s, one in two people were farmers.

Now it's an absolute fraction of that. And so we've only seen, obviously, modern ailments and disease has continued to rise. And especially in lieu with our exposure to toxicity, as you elegantly stated, is our toxic burden has become so heavy. If you look at gene testing, which was what we do here, well, we can practice precision medicine. But my curiosity is like the evolution of nutrients or supplements. Do you see at some point that being 100% personalized? Like someone could take a test and then there's going to be a company that can kind of just spit out exactly what you need or perhaps there are some companies that are doing that now.

Where do you see the evolution with nutrition or supplementation? I think this is where the people are at the moment that they've had the shift or desire. I think professionals like yourself is the future of anyone who is on the higher level of wanting to, and I put together, I say this constantly, we need a team approach, especially past age 40. because we can't read enough, listen enough, and be an expert at everything. We need someone who spends all day long, five days a week, like yourself, studying and has a passion and the ethics and the mindset that our bodies are built to be healthy, but something's got in the way of it.

How do we fix that? Well, you don't fix it through just a multivitamin. You don't just fix it from going to the gym and eating somewhat better. Everybody, like I told the lady, I was just in a consultation with the lady and I told her my take on a continuous glucose monitor. I said, you, she had some really serious health issues. I said, you really, I want you to do this for four weeks. And I said, the reason is. You know, I go to the gym every morning and I get up at 2.50. I'm at the gym every single day, Monday through Saturday at 4.30. And I've been doing that forever.

I can't even remember when I didn't do it. And I said, but I put this monitor on and I realized there's six foods. Yeah, it made me look like a diabetic. I have a hemoglobin A1C of 5.3 and that means it's very low and but there's one was caramelized onions.

Finding Patients and Building Trust 15:30

One was this tiny little egg and cheese at Starbucks. One was at my Thai place, a chicken massaman and a few others. What that told me was It's not all about just the nutrition. I need to have helpers. That continuous glucose monitor told me those foods are poison to me. I would have never known that without a helper and getting that through a health professional like yourself or someone else. So there's so many tools that are accessible now and people there are more views today than there ever has been.

because you had a shift somewhere or you would not be speaking this language. And I love the fact that, you know, some of this has to be cash only, some insurance will never be friendly to people like you or me. But I think people are so afraid of losing their health, dying early, not being able to hold the grandkids, not being able to perform, that they're willing to reach out. And there still always will be a mass who will be sleepwalking. It just is the nature of any conversation, but it's far less than it used to be.

And I'm very happy to see the amount who are interested in helping themselves. Yeah, and I say this all the time, we're going to pay for it either way. Either we pay for healthcare or we pay for sick care, right? And the model here is unfortunately often sick care, right? And so we're on the front lines trying to redesign that paradigm. But the CGM, the continuous glucose monitor, so I'm actually wearing one right now. Funny enough that you said that, so we share that. It's so powerful, right? Where tech has gone and how accessible it is.

I remember I used to pay like 500 bucks a month to get some data. Now this is like less than 90 bucks a month. And it's extremely insightful. As you said, you can now make very educated decisions on what happens in real time, how certain food is affecting your body. And then it opens up other doors for conversation. Oh, why is this happening? Like, are there sensitivities? Is there intestinal permeability? Are there other co-infections, et cetera? Again, the point with technology, it's becoming so much more approachable and affordable, which is great because now it improves the efficacy of what we're doing with our clients and patients alike.

Are there any other wearables or any other tech that you find that's noteworthy that you like? Because obviously you've seen so much way past myself, like how things have evolved. So what are some other things you like? Well, I do an aura ring for the past four years. I do feel that it was worth every penny. I've had a couple of them. They do wear out eventually. They predicted all six of my COVID cases I've had, because I can tell 24 hours before, respiration rate went up. Huh, my temperature's gone up.

Huh, my REM went down, my DEEP went down, my HRV went down. Wonder why. And then 24 hours later, I come down with COVID six times. And I got over all of them except the first one very, very quickly within a matter of days. And I checked my COVID test, not with a COVID test. I checked it with antibodies one week to two weeks later. So when my antibodies are at 5,000, there's no doubt I had it. There wasn't any lab error. That one, I use this watch right here for EMF protection that is beyond belief.

It's called Blue Shield. And I am very, I'm very skeptical these EMF things. But Blue Shield, I have the most confidence in. If anyone wants a Blue Shield, I don't know it off my head, but I have a discount code at nutritionworld.comcast.net if you want a discount code. But I have found that I have one of their devices in my house. I wear this most of the time. It's not blocking anything. It's actually putting out a huge level of EMF. that then rebalances the massive amount that's hitting from everywhere else.

And this has about a four foot radius to it. So I've been very happy with Blue Shield. I have gotten to where I'm doing less and less of the gadgets. You know, I do do a VO2 monitor sometimes I want to make, but the Aura ring to me has so many good, accurate components. It tells me when I'm over training in the gym, which is sometimes, sometimes I will do that because then my HRV just plummets when I'm over training. So I love the Aura, buy it at Best Buy's. I like, you know, you can get it instantly there or Amazon, either one.

Yeah, the Aura has been absolutely transformational. I remember that I first purchased with their Gen 1 ring, which was like wearing a rock on your finger. But it was made to last, which was a beautiful, very elegant design, and it's since evolved. But the data points are, again, very, very actionable. uh, very, very insightful. So you can now begin to, to make conscious decisions for training as an example. Like if I look, obviously you feel it, right? There's the point of where there's intuition, right?

You know, something's working or something's not. Um, but sometimes it's good to see, and sometimes we don't realize it, right?

Fitness Origins and Lifelong Health Habits 20:30

We see like, oh, actually, you know, this is kind of surprising. And so then once you begin to investigate further, you can now connect different dots or figure out patterns of how to improve your own. health outcome and be kind of the own hero of your own journey, which I think is absolutely essential. Because often we look outside to say, oh, someone else might have that answer. And yes, I always suggest hiring a practitioner. That's why I don't do my own taxes. But needless to say, there's still so much that you can do on a daily basis.

Talk to me about maybe Cause that's incredible. When you said that you wake up that early, I find people that are the most successful are the ones that are very consistent in their routine. Talk to me, maybe just on a personal level, what your routine looks like. Cause I'm sure it's allowed you to create a huge level of success with what you're doing on Chattanooga. I have a pretty intense routine. I'm a single guy. It would not work that well at 68 with a wife. There are very few women who would put up with me because I have to have, I'm not rigid rigid, but I practice a very scheduled life because that's the only way it can work.

So, you know, every morning is I get up at 2 52. That's the time. And most mornings I don't need the alarm. I wake up this morning at 2 48. So, you know, go ahead and get up. and I always meditate for about 20 minutes every single day. I'm a huge follower of Ron Doss who's been around for, has passed away, but he wrote the book Be Here Now. I've followed him since I was about 20. and then I will play a violin for about 15 minutes. I'm doing violin lessons once a week, but I practice every morning and every night because I'm so bad at it.

I've been doing it about seven months, but I want something creative. I am not just about business. I'm not about money. I don't make a lot because I've always put it back in the business, but I have more than I need. It's about setting up a legacy. My daughter works with me, and she will hopefully continue on for 40 years after I'm gone. So then I head to the gym. I come back to the store about 8 to 15, and then I will drink my protein. I have to have three protein drinks a day. I really value the fact that once I hit about one gram of protein per pound of body weight, my life changed for the positive like I could not believe.

I spent all my life thinking, too much protein's hard on the kidneys. We don't want too much protein. We only need 20 grams of protein. Well, since I have turned, once I turned about 63, I started doing higher protein levels and I have changed substantially as far as my ability to perform, think, body fat, muscular structure, strength levels. The other thing is I did have double hip replacement two years ago and I was going crazy for three and a half years with pain before I had the replacement.

I was on a walker the last few months. I was on a cane for the last year and a half before that. And I determined, again, by being, I'm a detective like you are about health. Why? I want to see what caused this to happen. And I'm firmly convinced it was oxalates. It was because I ate too many healthy foods. I was eating spinach. I was eating raspberries. I was eating almonds. I did a podcast with Sally Norton, who wrote the book, Toxic Superfoods. She's the guru of oxalates. I am now at 68 years old, have less pain than I had at 58, 48 and 38. I have no pain.

I'm zero pain free and it's because I had pain for 35 years. Just normal. Oh, my elbow today, my neck today, my ankle, my Achilles. I don't have any pain. Supplementation is part of it, but the biggest part is cutting out oxalate foods. So that was another wake up call for me that has helped many people that I've talked to because very few people talk the oxalate issue. So that's really interesting because that's my specialty is going deep in the microbiome and the GI. And if someone has an issue with oxalates, usually, and we run the test so I can see definitively, but there's a species of bacteria called oxalobacter that breaks down oxalose.

And so if you're low, you're going to have very difficult time. breaking down, digesting some of these foods and then when it recirculates, the problem because it's going to upregulate inflammation and so no surprise there. Again, the question I always ask is why, why are we low in certain healthy commensal species? And as you said before, it's just this very high toxic burden. right, that's kind of cleaning out, washing out some of these healthy microbes that are now like passed down from mother to kin, but then also in our environment.

And if we're eating foods that's constantly rinsed in pesticides, herbicides, sexicides, fungicides, obviously then you have the air, the water as well. It creates this toxic burden inside of us. And so our bacteria, which we're more bacterial DNA than we are human DNA, over a factor of 10 to one, we're more bacteria than anything else. It's critical to help feed those guys. And if we're missing some of that food and we're eating what we think is superfoods or nutrition, but yet it's actually causing more inflammation.

So that's an interesting story. I can definitely appreciate that within our patient population. So our goal is, while I don't always say, I mean, at some point you should be avoiding certain triggers, but the goal for me is how can we replenish some of these missing microbes, right? I agree completely. The issue is when you're 63 years old, where all my pain started, or 64, it was too late. It was already deposited itself into the joints. And because oxalates are like glass, like compounds, you wear and tear glass within your joints for 25 years.

They were gone. There was nothing left in my joint when we finally got the right pictures of my joint. And he removed both at the same time. And he said there was nothing left in them. There was no hope left. So, you know, 650 milligrams of oxalates in one serving of spinach, that is not healthy.

Wearables, CGMs, and Personalized Data 26:30

I don't care who you are. I don't care how many nutrients is in spinach. You are hurting yourself when you eat spinach, in my opinion. Yeah. And it's interesting to hear your perspective and especially as kind of the body ages and wear and tear. Again, it's in my clinical, on the clinical side of things, because we do a lot of testing and I see this all the time. When we begin to shift someone's terrain and thus their microbiome, people begin to heal. But the problem is people think they're eating healthy foods.

It's just not healthy for them right now. And in general, when we eat too much of anything, I'm not necessarily a proponent. I say all the time, you know, eat the seasons. Um, and then sleep cycles obviously matter too. So it's context of kind of the, the whole picture in terms of our inflammatory response. But, um, when do you go to sleep by the way? Cause you wake up so early. I'm not a great sleeper and I have to manage it with my supplements, the right. And whatever I find really helps doesn't keep helping ongoing.

That's why I have the EMF blockers, and I do the other thing. I don't overthink anymore. I used to overthink everything. Now I don't overthink anything. I roll with it. I put a plan in place, and I live my life. Because there's too many people like Brian Johnson, who I love all his stuff that he posts, but he doesn't have a real life. I mean, he does from morning till night. He's trying to extend his life. What life does he have to extend? It doesn't seem too quality to me. Uh, so sleep is somewhat of an issue.

There's no doubt. So I go to bed about seven 30, but I don't get the best room and deep. I mean, I had eight minutes of deep before last, you know, how bad that is eight minutes. I should be having 58 minutes at this age, but most nights I do better than that. And it is, you know, the R ring is the biggest reason that says, because I can tell you from this age and there's, it's so much different being 68 than I was 48. So much different. My accuracy of judging my sleep is pathetic, absolutely pathetic.

Sunday or, I don't know if it was Sunday or Friday, I woke up, man, I had a good night's sleep. That was fantastic. I look on the R-Ring and that was when I had eight minutes of deep sleep. I thought I had slept well. Now it catches up with me later in the day, but Me not having that aura ring, I would have been, okay, I can do anything I want. I can go out and fly my airplane. I can go run. I can do, no, if I did that, I'm going to dig into my recuperative powers. So I just know that I have to have evidence with the aura and I have to know that I don't know how good my sleep is.

I'll have to provide a very, very inexpensive and very effective sleep stress reset that we use with almost everyone here. And it really drives deep in REM. Very, very restorative. Really? Yes. I'll provide that for you after it's been a clinical pearl that I learned early on in my career that has been absolutely foundational. for anyone and everyone, myself included, because the problem is our modern lifestyle is in conjunction with our evolution. I mean, we were designed to go to bed and wake up in conjunction with the sun and the moon cycles.

You're kind of living proof of doing that more or less, which is great, but you're an anomaly for sure. So I'm impressed again, how consistent you're able to be in designing your lifestyle. But again, it's a testament to to your success, but sometimes it comes with a cost as you can see, but the good part is we can intervene with nutraceuticals and able to restore balance on a high level. I'd like to switch gears a little bit and talk about the power of social media in wellness because I mean, how we found you is you're an absolute guru on social.

I admire kind of all the content that you're able to put out there and the people that you're able to touch and really make change for the better on a very massive scale. You're getting, I mean, over 1 million views weekly across many different platforms. How do you attribute or what do you attribute your success to and the kind of momentum that you've been able to build? Well, I remember getting a Facebook account before very, before most people got one and I didn't play with it much. I did not have a vision that it would be the powerhouse it is and social media was it just, I was always on the cutting edge of most things because I love to dabble and.

But as the years went on, especially during COVID, I was banned several times for my outspokenness. And, you know, it took a lot of, you know, we had to really suck it up to keep moving on because we were under the, under the thumb bad. And we did not know if we were going to ever be able to awaken out of that. Well, here we are. We are. Thank goodness. But learning by mistakes, of course, is always the best learning lessons of life. And I just believe, and I've read, like Gary V, I really like his postings on how to be successful at social media.

But we need to be authentic, which is genuine. You're a very genuine person. I don't think anyone would say that, oh, he's selling me something. I think you're going to speak from the heart. We have to do it often. I don't know if we can even do it too often. And we have to build credibility by giving something that doesn't give us something in return. Some of my most popular podcasts are me going to Walmart and picking out which yogurts not to eat, which I've done many of these Walmart walks. And they hit hundreds of thousands within a matter of days every time I do it.

Which pan do you buy at Walmart that won't have the Teflons? It was very hard to find any. We were going to find one at Walmart. Now we used to go to Publix. We got kicked out of there because they don't want people doing that. And we went to Food City, which was here. Then the managers, they started questioning us. So Walmart, they're clueless. So we go every time to Walmart. That way we know we can get by with it. Uh, but we get millions of views off of educating people, you know, what, like what product, what chocolates have led in them.

Daily Routine, Protein, and Oxalates 33:00

And, you know, at the very end, if we sell a chocolate that doesn't, I will say, and you can come in the nutrition world or go online at nutritionw.com and order this product. So, but rarely do I push us. I usually do four or five informational posts and then I'll do one push post. Hey, I want you guys and girls to know that, you know, we offer this at a great deal or we have this service with these practitioners. And then the next four will be another credibility building and informational building.

And I don't see a lot of people doing it that way. And also the title, the title has to grab you. It has to be a very strong title or else you lose. Yeah, it sounds like consistency, though, above all else, has really been instrumental, too, in the sense of just constantly feeding your community, right? And the informational component, I think, is critical. You're giving a lot away in the sense of you're giving knowledge, you're providing them the resource of what is good, what is not good, or at least in that context.

So that makes sense. Do you have to ask Walmart if it's okay to film, or do you just go in and start doing it? You ask for forgiveness, not permission. Don't ask for that. And secondly, you carry a mic with you everywhere you go. I don't care where I am. If somebody does something, says something, embraces us in some positive manner or something that was very interesting. Hey, can I borrow you just a minute? Would you mind telling me what just happened or why you're buying this product? You have to carry a mic with you.

There were days that I would do two to three videos just by walking into the gym or seeing a person that I hadn't seen for years that had lost 50 pounds. Hey, tell me how you lost that 50 pound. If you don't carry a mic with you, you lose these magic moments. And are you going in with a script or you're just kind of. Nope. That's it. If you're scripting is not authentic, you have to have a mind of an idea, but you can't script it. Uh, and you know, 70%, 80% of the videos are done in house or in our podcast room or somewhere else.

And then about 25% are done outside of the store, uh, on other subjects, but they still relate to health. Yeah. Are you highlighting that? So inside nutrition, are you highlighting, uh, certain supplements or nutrients? If they are exciting, their breakthrough, there's something people won't know. Like would we highlight suntan lotion in spring? Yes, we will. I mean, it's a needed kind of highlight. Uh, you know, I mean, I think healthcare practitioners can certainly highlight if you're, you know, brave enough.

Are you concerned about the side effects of statin drugs? If you are, listen to me. Here we go. Your brain needs cholesterol, blank, blank, blank. But I think helping, filling a need is how social media becomes successful. You fill the need and then you have a title that tells them that they have a need, which they do if it's real, that you have some solution to help them down the road. Because people don't come in here, 400 people don't come in here every day to buy pretty bottles so they can go home with water and swallow these elongated chunks of something.

They come in here because they need hope, they need help, they need this, they need that. And we are here to supply that solution. We are solution people. And we tell people sometimes, we are not your solution. We don't have the things you need. And I train all of my staff members Never feel bad about saying, ma'am, I am sorry, but we are outside your scope of need. You need to go see someone else or we're just not capable of doing it. That builds credibility too. Yeah, I understood to let people go sometimes too.

You mentioned, I know protein previously, statins, certain breakthroughs. It's interesting because 10 years ago is when I was on the preaching about protein and protein in Latin means prime importance. That's how we actually create our macronutrient guidelines for our patients here. And so I was targeting somewhere between 0.8 to one gram per pound as well, way back, I mean, a decade ago now. Now it's understood like muscle as medicine and our biggest organ of longevity, if you will. As far as statins go, we won't go down that path today, but obviously preaching again, natural nutrients and how we can overcome certain things and also understanding blood report, you know, looking at cholesterol, if that's high, I get that all the time.

That's to me is probably the biggest misnomer in modern medicine. Cholesterol to me is a healing molecule, it's construction material, it's essential, part of every cell membrane. It's necessary to push out our hormones, all our specified hormones, as you said, is Um, in the brain, we, we need cholesterol. And if it's high, to me, there's a high body burden of inflammation. The question is why is cholesterol being elevated to put out what kind of a fire? And so the question is what really is the fire?

Corrosion is the solution. The statins come out and they strip the solution. That's the problem. Yeah, I love that. So needless to say, looking at peptides as an example of kind of modern breakthroughs in medicine, I mean, we were leveraging peptides for almost 10 years now. I joke all the time. I used to self-inject when it said not for human consumption on the label. So we've come a long way since then. And I know a lot of our patients appreciate, you know, some of these modern nutrients that we've been able to leverage to accelerate healing.

But as far as misnomers, like looking at cholesterol, do you see, or maybe what's some of the biggest misinformation you find that's being spread that you have to dispel with, with some of the people that walk through your door? Well, again, you and I share some, some similarities. I know you enough from one other conversation, just like the person I just had the client right before here. You know, first thing I do is explain that. You go to your doctor, you're gonna get two blood tests, you're gonna go to CBC and a CMP in most cases.

I said, those can tell whether you're ill or you're sick, but they don't really give any real value to putting together a plan of aging gracefully, not lessening diseases and thinking better, feeling better. And you are a functional integrative interpreter of blood work. And you understand that reference ranges are way too wide. You can have one foot in the grave and still be called normal. You want optimal. And your goal is to create the most optimal blood work for each patient you see, because you know the outcome will generally be outstanding if we can produce that kind of level.

And that takes a lot of thinking to do that, because the medical schools do not teach this. And you have embraced a whole toolbox that I don't know of many who have done that. On a podcast that I have called The Holistic Navigator, I interviewed Dr. James LaValle. He wrote the book on blood testing. And we talk about that there about how do you really interpret blood testing? And you're a person I know already that could do it to the level that we need it done. and then put together a plan, retest to see if you've made some kind of progress.

Social Media, Credibility, and Education 40:30

And if you haven't, you go back to the board and you do it again. But you are not a common person, so I value you. And the peptide thing, I have played with it for not 10 years, for, since COVID, how many years, five years, whatever that was. I've done the same thing you've done. I think there's such benefit in that, but you talk about very few people know much about peptides and the how to really recommend them, dose them, and you're one of the few people that I've been so impressed with about peptide therapy.

And I know in the legal world, it's changing all the time with this stupid government interventions with peptides, but I commend you for that because I want peptides in the toolbox. We need something to help the body help itself to rebuild. And peptides are certainly a powerful tool to do that. Yeah. And it's anything but mainstream. I have a good friend who's a cardiologist and I would ask him about certain peptides and he's never even heard of them. Right. And so the prudence is on us is to stay on the kind of the cutting edge of where medicine is evolving into.

And the science is unequivocal. I mean, the research out of Russia and Israel and Middle East countries, they've been using this China as well. They've been using this and that's why they were kind of doping before doping was legal. So we know the benefits. Now this is evolving kind of with bioregulators as well. It's becoming a staple in our practice for good reason. It's not necessarily cheap, but again, we like using what works most importantly in delivering the best outcomes for our patients.

I know you mentioned Jim, who's he just brought up a couple of new peptides to my attention the other day. So I'm very friendly with him. His book actually is right there. Good, behind me. Not only is he a mentor of mine, but also a friend as well. And so we talk about moving Italy together at some point. But in the interim, while we're still here, we try to fight the good fight. You mentioned aging gracefully, which is key. I know the older you get into your later sixties, that becomes even more relevant, obviously.

But it's great if we can start earlier. What are kind of maybe top three, top five? things you're considering or non-negotiables you have when it comes to longevity. Well, actually, I am a big proponent of rapamycin. I do believe in the proper dosing of rapamycin. I've been on that for some time. I do rotate dosing somewhat based on canker sores. I'm very sensitive to it. But I am completely convinced that, at least in animal studies, 12% extension of lifespan in most animals is tested on. No other molecule has ever done the consistency of life extending that rapamycin does.

And it is amazing. Two is I will never probably change my protein consumption. It's approximately 180 grams. I have to do two or three protein drinks a day. I prefer ancient nutrition because it's the only one that totally agrees with me because it's an A2 molecule and it tastes great. Secondly is the foundational platform of a nutrients. Now I'm, I know you from just talking to you, you're kind of a self-guinea pigger yourself. You're willing to try things. One thing, you try them so that when you speak, you speak from confidence.

Two is, a lot of the things we try, we dispose of because we didn't feel the confidence or we felt something we didn't ajive with us. Well, I've taken approximately 50 supplements a day since age 14. I'm now on a calculator just recently. It looks like I'm at 980,000. So I hope to live to be a million pills in my life because I'm damn close. I do IV ketamine every other week. I've got 98 IV ketamines under my belt, more than anyone in Chattanooga. I do it for the neuroplasticity effects. It is beyond belief how powerful that is to help the brain neurons, and it's great for other reasons too.

But, you know, the exercise in the gym, eating the right macros, which I eat 60 to 80 carbs Monday through Saturday morning. I have about 100 carbs on Saturday and Sunday. and that protein level, and then all my supplements, half of which I don't need. No one needs 50 a day, but it's my life, it's my hobby, and I really enjoy doing it. But we do, I feel that anyone who's 68 years old really can't be optimal unless you're taking probably about 15 supplements. I mean, just the multivitamin, the omega-3, and the magnesium, and the vitamin D, and the probiotic, right?

There's 12. So, you know, you got to do a foundation. We actually, I came up with a plan called the Core Four, which is just a packet of all those pills in one single thing called a Core Four. Makes life easy. You don't have bottles, but that's my plan for the remainder of my life. Probably with always tweaking. I think you're a tweaker. I'm a tweaker and we'll always, you know, try new things. Methylene blue is experimental right now. I'm not saying and recommending it highly, but I am experimenting to see how I'm doing with methylene blue at 30 milligrams a day.

So that was a lot, which was incredible, actually. I love that. Let's dissect and surmise some of that. So core four, I appreciate that. We have a foundation five, which is the multivitamin, multimineral fish oil, vitamin D, magnesium, and we'll kind of interchange a probiotic. So very, very similar there. Let's work backwards. So methylene blue, I'm actually doing a hundred milligram cycle right now, which is super high dose, which we can only do for a specific amount of time because otherwise it becomes almost too antimicrobial.

But I recently found a lot of mold in my house and we're doing a whole mold remediation. So I'm trying to get some more anti-funnels, more some anti-microbials on board. Definitely I'm urinating blue every single day, which is interesting, but I do find that it actually does work. So I'm doing a specific protocol for that. Rapamycin is an interesting one. So some of my colleagues do profess the benefit much like you.

Longevity Tools and Experimental Therapies 46:30

That's one, interestingly, I haven't started yet. The ketamine, even more interesting in my humble opinion. So I was first exposed to that when I did a mentorship out with Dr. Matt Cook at San Jose at Biomed Reset, I believe. is his clinic. And so he was very, very bullish on ketamine. This was, oof, I mean, over 10 years ago. Um, so I guess, kudos to you two to be able to leverage that and see the benefit for neuroplasticity. Obviously to me, what really goes back to our core is exercise. Like nothing drives the beat enough better than, than a simple, simple form of movement.

Like getting in strength training a couple of times a week, but just movement in general, we were designed to be, to be moving, not necessarily pounding the rubber as we have evolved to running marathons or even bodybuilding competitions. While we do that here, we have different clients that have different goals. We love supporting that. That takes a toll, right? I always say like, if you want to train hard, you got to recover twice as hard. So some of the tools that we have at our disposal that you're doing, prioritizing recovery seems kind of really the foundation here, the supplements, the nutrition, protein.

Getting that amount of protein, that to me is prioritizing recovery, refueling the body what it needs. When you spoke about our toxic burden and, and CYP450, the supporting liver enzymes and detoxification. It's not only energy dependent, but it's nutrient dependent. So when people talk to me about fasting, it's great for people. You want to suppress mTOR in some capacity. That's why I'll go through cycles of really loading protein and then cutting back and driving AMPK and finding that happy medium.

Um, but looking at fasting, it's not right for everyone at the right time. Same thing with the oxalate, same thing with some of these superfoods, right? Context matters. That's why I always say, you know, hire a professional to help guide you that that's going to be the shortcut. But the interesting part is, yeah, we're always going to become guinea pigs so that we can speak with both confidence and conviction. And obviously it's going to help us. And if it helps us, it's probably going to help someone else in the long run, because we're able to kind of point someone in the right direction of what works and what may not work.

And while plans are always individualized, what works for you may not work for me and vice versa. The good part is science is science, right? So at the end of the day, there's going to be an upside to kind of how tech has evolved and obviously some of these newer peptides and nutrients that now we can incorporate with our patients. So what you're doing is nothing short of amazing. You're really trying to cover all your bases, which speaks to the epitome of longevity. It sounds like you're on the Brian Johnson plan with all those supplements though.

But I live my life to the fullest. I still drink my tequila at night and I love women and I love dating and I'm a rascal and I just enjoy so much of life and I value you because I haven't had this kind of conversation on this level in so long because I don't have you know, a person, even with my practitioners, they have their niche of knowledge. It's phenomenal. But you have the bigger toolbox because anything I bring up, you already know a good amount about. And it's a breath of fresh air for me.

You were setting yourself up for tremendous success. You're in the world perfectly timing how the needs are developing. And you're going to have the toolbox for these needs with markability, the right markability. There's the end is marvelous. It just is. So I appreciate the very kind words. I guess the prudence on us is to always stay current. So my goal as science continues to evolve is to continue to put myself out there, learn and grow. I say I want to be a student for life. I don't ever intend on retiring.

Medicine is going to continue to change. And so the goal is to stay current and make sure that we're providing the best outcomes for our patients. I appreciate what you're doing. I mean, it's nothing short of absolutely astounding the amount of people that you connect with, your community, how many lives you've been able to change, what you've built over, I mean, four and a half, approaching five decades now is nothing short of remarkable. I mean, obviously we both gone through that life cycle where we both had our pain points, but We come out stronger.

We live to tell the tale. So I appreciate the experience and the conversation today. It's been nothing but pleasurable. And so as a, um, how we wrap up all conversations, I like to ask one last question is if you want, if you were to have one superpower, well, what would it be? One superpower? Yeah. If you could do anything, what would your superpower be? Well, if you're asking what would be like the only, like my bucket list is almost non-existent anymore. I live more in the moment today, but if I could go rewrite any history, I would be a fighter pilot.

I love aviation so much and I would have loved fighting, flying in combat. That would have been absolutely incredible. Do you, when you're up there, cause you, you fly, it sounds like at least it's quite a bit or has some experience. Is there a sense of nerves there or anxiety or do you feel Zen and like that's your happy place? It's funny. I have a combination of both and it's not anxiety, but it's anxiousness. I'm on edge because there's so much you have to do within that six pack. We call it the six instruments.

And I also fly a 1942 Stearman, which is a plane that they built 10,000 of to train World War II pilots. And I haven't flown it in some time, because I actually kind of crashed it. But I can fly upside down, and I can do other things. But I did, just so that I can say this. About two years ago, I was flying by myself at about 4,000 feet. And I see what I thought was a pack of birds coming at me.

Aviation, Superpowers, and Closing Remarks 52:30

It was a UFO that was stupid. It was like a totem pole. It was shaped just like a totem pole. It had all these weird signs and different insignias on it. And it flew at me. And it took my breath away. It was so dramatic. And it flew right past my window. And I started chasing it. And I'm doing 140 miles an hour. And it must have been doing 500. And I, of course, couldn't get a photo of it, but it was an interesting, life-changing moment to always hear about UFOs and think, oh, I'll never see one.

This bad boy flew right past me. Life is full of interesting moments. That is incredible. That's powerful. Well, this has been nothing but absolutely a breath of fresh air. As you said, this has been wonderful. I very much enjoyed the conversation. Where can people connect with you, learn more, find you, or reach out if they're interested? Well, nutritionw.com is where most of our information is from the Facebooks to the YouTubes. And we have an app. If you download it, it's easier to look on the app.

Or you can just go online, nutritionw.com. And I praise you. I think we'll be partnering as partners for a long time. And we are team members. So I'm glad to have another member of a team that we are on the same plane, flying to the same place in the same intensity. And pun intended, I hope one day you and I can fly together. That would be a great enjoyment of mine. So Chicago's not that far away. I've flown out there before and we can, we can make that happen. I look forward to that. All right.

This has been a genuine pleasure. Thanks guys for tuning in and I look forward to meeting again next time on the channel. Bye for now. Thank you, doctor. Bye bye. Thank you for tuning in to Doctor Talks. We hope today's episode has enlightened and inspired you on your path to optimal health. Each day is a new opportunity to make choices that empower your well-being. For more insights and strategies, subscribe to our podcast and visit our website, www.doctortalks.com. Stay connected, stay healthy, and join us next time on Doctor Talks, Real Talks from Real Doctors, on the issues that matter to you most.